Surveys, surveys, surveys

In order to measure the impact of a project you have to know what the basis is. For our “Saving Lives in the Caribbean Through Prepardness” Disaster Risk Reduction project we worked on exactly that in the past weeks. In all the 14 communitites we did the so called “baseline” survey to measure how well prepared is ‘the’ community. In order to do that, 100 households per community get asked 32 questions. 32 Questions that I repeated for almost two weeks, every day in a row. 32 questions that follow you from breakfast to bed. And it takes quite a few days to recover and not think of

“Do you think natural disasters are A) great concern B) little concern C) no concern or D) you don’t know” or

“What types of disasters have occured in your community the last 5 years?” or

“How prepared is your family to handle a disaster A) very prepared B) somewhat prepared C) not prepared or D) Don’t know” or

“Which of the following statements best describes your family? A) We have not done anything to prepare for a disaster – and we don’t plan to B)We have not done anything to prepare for a disaster – but we plan to in the coming month C) We just recently began preparing for a disaster D) We are prepared for a disaster” or

“Have you and your family members ever spoken about or planned what you would do if a disaster occurs? If yes, what did you discuss?” or

“In the past six month, have you received information on disasters from the government, seen something on TV, received a pamphlet, (…)” or

“Does your community have a disaster plan? A) yes B) no C) don’t know” or

“In the past year, has the government been involved in any projects or activities related to reducing risks and vulnerability in the event of a disaster in your community?” A) yes B) no C) don’t know

…

And the list goes on and on and on. The survey form was developed from the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and is a great tool to cover all the areas that relate to peoples prepardness, knowledge and available support.

Conducting those hundreds of surveys needs a strong volunteer support. We are lucky that we got some great volunteers that helped us out with this task. On the one hand we had experienced volunteers, that are so called NITs (part of the “National Intervention Team” that assists in national disasters). These ladies are always available for Red Cross work although they live outside the city districts and have to take a long busride to reach the city. On the other hand, we got support from students from local universities. Before we started I gave presentations on “Volunteering with the Red Cross” (7 fundamental principles, no cursing/fighting/politics/religion stuff while wearing the emblem, what we do etc.) as well as the project itself.

Some of our great volunteers

In the field it was quite interesting. We went from houses that are hardly hold together by a few nails and some zink walls to fine concrete houses with 3+ floors. One thing 90% of them had in common: DOGs. Big dogs, small dogs, dirty dogs, injured dogs, dogs with an iguana tail for lunch, dead dogs, smelly dogs and nonstop-barking-at-anything dogs. Most people have not one but at least three of them. And to quote our friend John “The dogs are there to bark, and that’s what they do.” . I recommend to read his blogpost about dogs in Belize in full to get a better understanding. Anyway. We continued our mission through the communities, ignoring 300 pound pitbulls giving their two cents to the surveys.

Anna and Micah on tour

Other than than asking the wonderful 32 questions again and again and again, I was busy with the daily organisation. From cursing because of people being late over making sure everybody gets a lunch meal, water and a juice (standard Belizean lunch), signing attendance sheets, taking pictures, checking maps, organising teams and making sure everybody is happy (and not eaten by a stray dog, crocodile or huge pothole), counting survey forms over and over again, cleaning out the car and preparing the next day.

Happy after a long day

The evaluation for all the communities is still going on. Not surprisingly the mayor concerns are hurricane and flood related in all the communities. The level of prepardness and knowledge is way different from community to community and even varys within single communities.

My lessons learned:

Missing to apply sunblocker to that one spot on your neck, where the badge holder shows, gives you ridiculous sunburn.

Try as hard as you want, everything starts late. My best was 15min, worst 2hrs late. Best practise was to not wait for late people (and just let them do office work if they show up at all) instead of delaying the whole field trip for all the others.

I ♥ our Toyota Landcruiser. So nice to swing over nasty potholes without having to fear the car falls apart (like most our taxi cars).

A Toyota Landcruiser with a broken flange sounds like a bulldozer (speaking of ‘raising awareness’ =) )

Just because google maps shows a street in their 2006 version, it doesn’t mean that it is still there. Most likely it is re-jungled forest.

Drift sand looks pretty but not with a 2000 pounds car around you.

For me it was a great experience to get to know the communities better. Meeting the people, seeing the different houses, wondering (e.g. why would somebody in a quite fine neighbourhood keep a cow chained to a trailer on the concrete sidewalk with nothing to eat and drink?!) and advocating the project. The next step will be community meetings to inform the mayority (more likely those people interested in disaster prepardness that have nothing better to do that evening…) about the project, asking for their support and getting the communities ready, not only for the soon-to-be-here hurricane season.

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After what some may consider careers in consulting and logistics, we quit our jobs, sold our stuff and left Germany to be full-time travelers and development volunteers. This blog is about our travels, our work as volunteers and our alternative life strategies - always looking to make an impact and to find the meaning in what we do or put some into it if we can't find any.

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This website is about Kerstin & Holger Heinze - we're two yuppies from Frankfurt Germany who were so sick and tired of our corporate careers that we sold everything we owned to fund a year abroad.
We are working as volunteers, first skilled in our fields of expertise and then unskilled for grass roots charities.
At the same time, we're on our honey moon doing what we love: Travel, meet new people, go new places.
Right now we are in Belize, Central America working for the Red Cross and the Belize Tourism Industry Association.